CrystalTears
by Rensong
Summary: They both tired of the game a long time ago, but it's all they know how to do anymore.


_Authors Note: This is my first ever fic, written back around 2002 or 2003, I can't remember exactly when. And it kind of shows._

_~*~  
_

The sound of a key turning in the door was loud in the otherwise silent house. It opened and Miss Parker half walked/half stumbled through the entrance, flipping on a light switch and kicking off today's 3 inch black pumps in one movement. She closed the door behind her and leaned against it, shoulders slouching as if the weight of the world were resting across them. Closing her eyes, not bothering to straighten the wrinkles that formed in her matching black mini-skirt and blouse, she just stood and welcomed the silence.

Home sweet home, the only place she allowed that wall of quick-witted sarcasm and cold uncaring she hid beneath every day at the Center to fall. Here there wasn't anyone to intimidate or stare down; here there was freedom from the world of deadly plots and lies that she lived in. Here she could take down the mask, revealing the drained and weary woman that stood beneath. A woman tired of all the running and the chasing, wishing there was some way to escape the "family business."

Faint dark circles shown under eyes lined with loss, no longer able to remain hidden by the cosmetic world's latest make-ups and night creams. It had been months since Daddy had jumped off the plane with the scrolls, disappearing from existence with the push of a button and a single step into open air. No body had been found, of course, but what was the likelihood of finding a single broken man in one giant ocean? Pretty god damned hopeless. No one could have survived a fall like that... but who ever really died when it came to the Center?

She didn't know what to believe in anymore. With her father gone, if he was in fact her father, she had no one left to hide behind. Sydney and Broots were the only family she had left, the hell of all they had been through together over the past 5 years bonding them closer then the tainted blood of her so called real "family" ever could. But neither of them had the awesome presence of power she needed when it came to trying to smooth over all the bumps. And as for those she hated to admit she shared genes with; she wouldn't trust Lyle as far as she could throw him, and Raines... Raines was the scum of the universe all wrapped up in expensive suits and tied with oxygen tubes.

Home was the only place she had left to run, taking comfort in the stained wood and warm memories of the house her mother had loved. Her sanctuary, even if it had seemed a little colder ever since Tommy died. More often then she would like to admit she wished she didn't come home to an empty house, but at least she could come home.

She sighed and pushed herself away from the door, opening her eyes and running a hand through her hair. She was about to go to her room and get ready for a shower when she noticed a small box sitting on the lamp table next to the couch. She walked over to it, not surprised when she saw her name in Jarod's bold, blocky print written across the top. What word game or memory from their messed up past did Wonder Boy have in store for her tonight?

She sliced through the scotch-tape holding the box closed with one finely manicured fingernail and pulled it open. Inside was a handful of crystal-clear glass drops, the likes of which were usually found at craft shops for decoration of glass bottles or children's art projects, as well as a small card written in the same stocky text she had grown so familiar with over the years.

CRYSTAL TEARS,

FITTING FOR THOSE OF US

FORCED TO HIDE BEHIND

A HEART OF ICE

As if on cue, the phone rang. Still holding the box, she reached across the arm of the sofa to pick it up, already knowing who it would be.

"The list of loved ones the Center has taken away from us just keeps getting longer and longer, doesn't it?"

She sighed again and leaned her head against the back of the over-stuffed couch. "The Center didn't take away my father, Jarod... he did that all by himself."

"Didn't they?" he shot back, "Always over the years he seemed to be on top of things. Even when you thought he was the victim, in the end he ended right back where he started, holding the end of the leash that all of you were tied to. And for the most part, he was at the top. But I saw him open the scrolls, Parker, and I saw the look on his face after he read them. After all that they have hidden from us, do you really think the Center would have told him everything?"

She didn't answer right away. Instead she sat in silence, mulling over a possibility she was surprised that had never really even crossed her mind. Could the Center really hide something so important from him for so long?

The possibility was likelier then she would have liked to admit. After all, they had some how managed to hide their family's gruesome history from him, hadn't they? Great Grampa Parker, loving husband and father, had lost his mind and killed his family after reading the scrolls. If the Center had some how managed to hide that little tidbit for almost 40 years, if not more, then there was no telling what else they would have been able to hide.

"Parker?"

Jarod's voice on the other end of the line snapped her back to the present, the threads of thought floating back from whence they had come like leaves on the wind. But the seed had been planted, and the possibility was too great for her to brush off and try to forget without more consideration.

She shook her head and placed her free hand and the bridge of her nose, feeling the start of a headache coming on. "I don't know, Jarod... after all, I'm just their lowly pawn in this chase, they never tell me anything."

"More secrets, more lies... Why do you keep setting yourself up for heartache, Parker?"

Her headache was fast becoming a migraine, and she wasn't in the mood for anymore questions he knew as well as she did could never be answered. "Because I'm a masochistic bitch who always comes whining home to her master," she shot back with more venom in her voice then she intended. She took a breath and forced herself to lower her voice before continuing. "You expect me to walk away, Jarod? I already tried that, and you and I both know the result." She couldn't help the tears that formed in her eyes at the memory of Tommy before she quickly dashed them away. "You said it yourself, I've been a Center prisoner all these years, just like you. They just gave this dog a longer leash."

There was silence on the other end, and Miss Parker allowed herself the little victory of leaving the all-knowing Jarod without words. But the victory was short lived. She had spoken the bitter truth and both of them knew it, no matter how much she wished it weren't.

"So we're back where we started started from." he finally answered.

"It's a race we'll never be free from, Jarod," she said, letting a little of the weariness that plagued her spiritually and physically sound in her voice. "We will ever be trapped in the same old game...You run..."

"And you chase," he finished for her, and she heard the weariness in his own voice. Running and chasing, it had been the dance they played all their lives, though over the years it seems their roles in it had been reversed. As children, she had always been the one running. Running from her feelings, from her memories, from anything that might cut afresh the wounds left by the death of her mother. And he had always been behind her, and anchor in a world of dark and storm-tossed oceans, waiting for her with open arms for whenever she was ready to come running back.

"I'm not giving up, Parker," he said at last, before she heard the line cut off on the other end leaving her with nothing but silence to listen too. She then took her own phone from her ear and pushed the 'off' button, holding it against her chin as she stared blankly at the wall across from her. They never said goodbye, partially because they knew that it would only be a matter of days before fate would bring them together long enough for her to watch him run away again. Partially because she knew he was still there for her, still waiting for the time when she would give in and finally come running back home to him.

She hung up the phone, and then looked at the little box now sitting in her lap. Crystal tears, one for every time she had forced herself to hold the real ones back... _Too many times,_ she thought.

Home at last, free from hiding until she got up the next day and put the mask firmly back in place, she covered her face in her hands and let herself weep.

~*~

Far away in his latest hideaway, a man hung up the phone and rose from where he had been sitting on the bed. He sighed and ran a hand through his dark hair, longer now then it had been all his life, but not quite long enough to prove troublesome yet. He walked to the window, and looked unseeing over the dark and dank inner-city ally that was the closet thing to a parking lot this week's cheap hotel had. The neon sign of some dingy bar across the street buzzed and reflected in the water-stained window, but Jarod didn't notice.

He transferred his attention to a small white box that was sitting on top the dresser next to the window. He picked it up and poured its contents into his hand. A handful of small, glass drops glittered in his open palm. Crystal tears, exactly like the one's he had left for Parker. The closest he ever got to the real thing anymore, the Center's twisted games and simulations drilling it into his brain that tears were bad, that crying was a sign of weakness he would never be allowed to show in their presence. And what could he say, old habits died hard.

The agony of it was that tears were the one thing he wished he could shed. He'd spent the last 5 years of his life running; walking into people's lives and trying to change them for the better, but fading out of them once the job was done and never finding someone to cling too along the way. That was a long time to be alone. So he had his share of loves and relationships, few though they might be. But he always had to leave them behind, as much as it hurt, because he always ended up being a danger to whoever he got close too.

So he clung to his past, searching for a family he may never find and holding fast to the few people in his life that had wormed their way into his heart. Unfortunately, they were the same people who had orders to drag him back to the hell he had spent most of his life a part of, a part of his past he never wanted to return too. The only family he had ever known.

He sighed and closed his eyes, fist closing around the crystal drops and holding them so tight he could feel his fingernails biting into the meaty part of his palm. He raised the hand clenching the clear, colorless glass to his lips, letting a single tear escape down his cheek. He was trapped in the same world as Parker, where emotions had no place and they were forces to suffer alone.

But at least in their solitude, they could suffer together.


End file.
